In 2016, the Netflix chime introduced The Crown, a dramatic retelling of the British royal family starring Claire Foy, Matt Smith, and Vanessa Kirby, and television history was made. That formula has become a tried-and-tested playbook for Netflix ever since, proven by shows like Inventing Anna and Baby Reindeer. Now the streaming giant is set to use it again with its upcoming series, The Retrievals.

To bring its Peabody Award-winning New York Times podcast series to life, Netflix has chosen the very talented Jessica Chastain.

With its last successful season of originals having ended with Stranger Things, both Netflix and its audiences have been on the hunt for a good story. And the streamer seems to have found more than just that in The Retrievals. To further add a literal cherry on top, Netflix has picked Academy award winner Jessica Chastain to portray Kaitlyn Langford, an art historian who became a key plaintiff in the court case.

Chastain is not the only big name that Netflix has scouted for The Retrievals; Emilia Jones and Amy Ryan will also be starring in the drama. To further ensure that the cherry is not the only good part of the cake, Molly Smith Metzler, the creator behind Sirens and Maid, will write and executive produce the series.

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But for all the star power Netflix has assembled, the real draw of The Retrievals may be the story it is actually telling.

While Netflix is not leaving any stone unturned for its series, the real gem in The Retrievals is the story that it is based on: a Yale University clinic drama that involved f******* theft. The story really entered public sphere in 2023 following The Retrievals podcast, that revealed how for over a period of five months in 2020 a nurse would replace f******* with saline water for women undergoing IVF egg retrievals for her own addiction.

When the female patients complained of severe, unmanageable pain, it neither raised alarms for the clinic nor did it trigger an internal investigation. Furthermore, the replacement only came to light when another staff discovered that the f******* vial had a loose cap.

The court case that followed demanded a $308,250 civil settlement in 2022 from Yale University, while the nurse who pleaded guilty received three years of supervised release, four weekends of incarceration, three months of home confinement, and surrender of her nursing license. With a story this unflinching, it is easy to see why Netflix reached for its biggest names; The Retrievals needed performers who could match the weight of what actually happened.

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Will you be watching The Retrievals? Let us know in the comments.